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Samsung Mobile announced its second Android phone of the week, this time aimed at Sprint's 3G network. Now available for pre-order for a Nov. 1 shipment, the “Moment” is based on an 800MHz Samsung processor, and offers a 3.2-inch AMOLED touchscreen, 3.2-megapixel camera, WiFi, Bluetooth, plus GPS, says Samsung.

The Samsung Moment is available for $180 with rebate and a two-year service agreement, says Sprint. The Moment is Sprint's second Android phone, since it earlier signed up to carry the HTC Hero. The Hero is also widely expected to be heading for Verizon Wireless, which announced yesterday that it would offer two Android phones. The other is expected to be Motorola's second Android phone after the Cliq, which is code-named Sholes.

The "Moment" is Samsung's third Android model after the i7500 phone (pictured at right), which started selling on Telefonica's O2 network in Germany earlier this year, and the T-Mobile destined Behold II, which was announced on Monday. Samsung also recently announced a 360 H1 phone based on the LiMo (Linux Mobile) specification, which will be offered by Vodafone this fall in Europe.

Both Sprint and Samsung are charter members of the Open Handset Alliance, which launched the Android project with Google's backing almost two years ago.

The Samsung Moment appears to be fairly similar in features to both the Samsung Behold II (pictured at left) and the Sprint-network HTC Hero, although the Moment is the only one of the three to offer a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The other key difference is that the Moment's camera is rated at 3.2 megapixels instead of the five megapixel cameras available with the other two phones.

The Moment's size (4.5 x 2.2 x 0.5 inches) and weight (4.5 ounces) are identical to the Hero's, and it offers a touchscreen with the same 3.2-inch size and 480 x 320 resolution. The Moment, however, adds AMOLED (active-matrix organic light emitting diode) display technology, which is also available on the Samsung Behold II, i7550, and 360 H1. AMOLED offers "crisper colors and wider viewing angles" than typical LCDs, according to Samsung.

While the Hero offers a Qualcomm QCT MSM7500A chipset, according to Sprint, the Moment, understandably enough, uses a Samsung SoC, the 800MHz S4C6410. Both the Qualcomm and Samsung SoCs appear to be new models, judging from the lack of information available, but are presumably ARM-based SoCs.

Samsung Moment

The Samsung Moment appears to offer 256MB of DDR RAM and 512MB of flash memory, although the Sprint spec list also says the device offers 288MB of DDR "Internal Memory," which may be a typo. In addition, Sprint lists ROM as being "512MB+64MB." In any case, there is also a MicroSD slot that supports up to 32GB, twice as much as that offered for the Behold II.

Other features match up with the Behold II and HTC Hero, including WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, MP3 player, and a headphone jack. In addition to the slide-out keyboard and touchscreen, the Moment offers an optical joystick located below the display.

It does not appear that the phone offers Samsung's Touchwiz UI layer, and it certainly does not offer the HTC Sense UI extensions provided for the Hero, so users will get the pure Android 1.5 ("Cupcake") experience here. Sprint also mentions that the phone offers various Google apps and Sprint Mobile applications, as well as access to the thousands of Android apps available on the Android Market.

Sprint recently launched Android tools and support on its developer site, says the company. Services and tools include support for developing location-based services, messaging, and geofencing, using the Sprint Developer Sandbox.

Stated Kevin Packingham, SVP of product development for Sprint, "With a full QWERTY keyboard, Samsung Moment allows customers to easily access the thousands of applications available in the Android Market."

Stated Omar Khan, SVP of strategy and product management for Samsung Mobile, "With the combination of the Android platform, applications, Web browser and a powerful 800MHz processor, the user experience options are unlimited."

Availability

The Samsung Moment is available today for pre-order, here, for $180 with rebate and a two-year service agreement, and availability is expected on Nov. 1. More information may be found on Sprint's new Android development site, here.